In manufacture of components for the airplane, automotive, shipbuilding and other industries, carbon composite materials (e.g. CFRP) are typically stored in industrial freezers prior to use. Once a unit of material is defrosted for use, it must reach the manufacturing stage of curing within a set time, termed the ETL (exposure time left), or it will deteriorate in quality and be deemed unsafe for use. At any given time, a multitude of units of material will be in use on a production floor, with each unit having a different ETL, since the units may originate from various rolls of “parent” material. Additionally, the units are temperature sensitive, so that the temperature of each unit must be monitored and fluctuations in temperature must be avoided.
It is difficult at present to keep track of the various expiration dates of materials on the production floor and in stock, and there is no way to receive real-time notification of the status of the materials or of central equipment. There may be numerous tools and equipment in use on a production floor, making it difficult to track their location and condition. Prior art software may monitor the contents of a stockroom in a general manner, and may generate reminders to reorder dwindling stock, however it does not provide warning of “close to expiry” stock, and does not include any decision making component which provides problem solving.
It would be desirable to provide a production floor manager with a calculated decision as to specific units of materials which are suited for immediate use in producing a specific final component. Suitable software would take into consideration the quantity of materials necessary for the job, the closest expiry date of materials in stock, and would automatically monitor the well-being of the material from its entry to the factory until it is deemed no longer sensitive to the environment.
To date, quality assurance tests are performed at the end of manufacture of a specific complex component. If the equipment is faulty at a central production station, this will not be discovered until a much later date, when the final component fails to pass a quality assurance test. It may then be difficult to pinpoint the exact equipment that failed, resulting in waste of a large quantity of unusable components that were manufactured in the meantime until testing of all equipment was complete.
It is desirable to be able to track the passage of tagged materials through the various productions stations, and identify which equipment is used on which batch of material. It would be advantageous to receive warnings when routine maintenance is due for each specific tool, with warnings directed to the appropriate employee. These steps will prevent loss of material which can be highly costly and can delay delivery of the final product.
It would also be advantageous to track materials in real-time, receive real-time updates when equipment is available and thus plan maximal efficiency of the production floor.
While prior art tagging is known for monitoring and data communication with robots or machinery, the present invention provides tagging and monitoring mobile assets such as raw material and assemblies. While prior art manufacturing execution systems (MES) may exist for monitoring work orders, these do not typically track ‘mobile assets’ such as raw materials available, or in use, for a given work order. In addition, such MES systems are limited to tracking work orders, but do not incorporate algorithms that could make production decisions or could make recommendations based on the data collected.
The invention provides a computerized method and system for efficiently managing a production floor, including monitoring and best use of materials sensitive to the environment. The invention takes into account the context of each asset being tracked, so that it determines if a given location and state of an asset is within an allowable range, and outputs a decision how best to proceed. The decision is sent as an alert or recommendation, generated to relevant personnel. These and other advantages will be enlarged upon in the Detailed Description of the Invention herein-below.
While the invention is described below in relation to its use in tracking manufacture of aircraft components, this is merely a common example, and the software may be utilized to track manufacture of any article. The software may be utilized to plan efficient production of any item, by tracking progress of tagged key assets through the production floor.